FRANKFURT, Germany, June 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Frankfurt Airport's (FRA) traffic development during the past three months - especially compared to figures at the beginning of the year - continues to provide optimism. In particular, the decline in aircraft movements as well as airfreight and airmail continued to slow slightly.

Aircraft movements dropped only 4.4 percent year-on-year to 40,666 takeoffs and landings. With 146,259 metric tons in May 2009, FRA's airfreight slowdown narrowed to 17.1 percent. At 2.37 million metric tons, maximum takeoff weights (MTOWs) were only 4.8 percent below the comparable month last year. FRA served a total of 4.4 million passengers last month, down 6.3 percent year-on-year.

Traffic decline rates also shrank over the entire January-to-May 2009 period. A total of 19.6 million passengers resulted in a cumulative loss of 8.6 percent. Airfreight throughput reached 674,258 metric tons, down 22.5 percent for the first five months of the year. With 187,770 takeoffs and landings, aircraft movements dropped 6.0 percent below the previous year's level. Punctuality of takeoffs and landings reached an average level of 83.7 percent for the January-to-May 2009 period. This was partially due to optimization of operational procedures carried out in cooperation with the airlines and air traffic control.